diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 5944509..926f506 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -4,6 +4,13 @@ All notable changes to the Rust Apify API client are documented here. The format
 based on [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.1.0/) and the project adheres
 to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/).
 
+## [Unreleased]
+
+### Changed
+- Brotli request bodies are compressed at quality 1 instead of the reference client's 6. On
+  dataset items that makes compression about 5x faster (about 1.3 ms to 0.27 ms per 70 KB item)
+  for bodies about 14% larger.
+
 ## [0.13.0] - 2026-10-19
 
 ### Added
diff --git a/src/http_client.rs b/src/http_client.rs
index 1055643..8ee79e6 100644
--- a/src/http_client.rs
+++ b/src/http_client.rs
@@ -37,9 +37,11 @@ const MIN_COMPRESS_BYTES: usize = 1024;
 const CONTENT_ENCODING_BROTLI: &str = "br";
 /// `Content-Encoding` value used for gzip-compressed request bodies.
 const CONTENT_ENCODING_GZIP: &str = "gzip";
-/// Brotli quality level (0–11). The reference client compresses request bodies at quality 6,
-/// which balances ratio against CPU cost; we mirror that.
-const BROTLI_QUALITY: u32 = 6;
+/// Brotli quality level (0–11). The reference client uses quality 6, but on dataset items quality
+/// 1 is about 5x faster for bodies about 14% larger (the body still shrinks by over 80%). Qualities
+/// 2 to 5 are barely faster than 6. For scrapers pushing many items, compression is a noticeable
+/// share of their CPU time.
+const BROTLI_QUALITY: u32 = 1;
 /// Brotli sliding-window size (log2), 22 is the library default (a 4 MiB window).
 const BROTLI_WINDOW_SIZE: u32 = 22;
 /// Internal buffer size for the brotli encoder.